Star must choose between crack or chemo

In the heat of a championship baseball match, Darryl Strawberry found it easy to make the right call. Knowing which pitch to slug into the stands for a home run, knowing when to risk an attempt at a stolen base, these were split-second decisions that he usually got right and fans across the United States loved him for it.

Next week, Strawberry must make an altogether different kind of call - and this time his life is at stake.

Strawberry's lanky 6ft 6ins frame is riddled with cancer. In October 1998, the former left-handed hitter for the New York Mets and Yankees had a 16-inch portion of his large intestine removed in order to get rid of a tumour almost two and a half inches long. Later that same month, doctors announced Strawberry would have to undergo chemotherapy after it was discovered the cancer had spread to a lymph node. Then, in August this year, he lost his left kidney.

At the age of 38, chemotherapy is keeping Strawberry alive. Yet, he has already threatened once to quit the course of treatment and there are genuine fears that he may do so again, with terminal consequences, if he is forced to return to his current place of abode - Hillsborough County Jail in Florida.

Strawberry, who once mixed with the rich and famous because he, too, was rich and famous, is now reduced to eating and sleeping with lowlives.

On Thursday last week, at Hillsborough County Court, he was sentenced to 30 days for sneaking out of a drug rehabilitation centre and going on a binge with crack cocaine. With time served and good behaviour, Strawberry could be released as early as Monday or Tuesday, but that is when his problems really begin.

He will be fitted with an electronic tag and Judge Florence Foster made it clear that he will go back behind bars for a long time if he again breaks the terms of his probation. These include regular drug testing and attendance at meetings of Narcotics Anonymous.

The reality of Strawberry's long history of drug abuse and alcoholism suggests that this World Series winner with both New York teams will struggle to stay out of trouble, but on his own admission, life back in prison will not be worth living.

In a frank interview broadcast on NBC television in the US, Strawberry revealed how his illness and the treatment had driven him out of the rehab centre and back to cocaine.

He admitted: "I wanted to get out, I was feeling so much pain. I was so just weak and so down because I had been taking chemo. Chemo was basically just tearing me apart inside and I didn't want to feel the pain anymore. I wanted to escape.

"I just basically said 'forget it, I'm going, I'm going to get high'."

Inevitably, Strawberry was caught and remanded in prison, but while awaiting sentence at last Thursday's hearing he refused his chemotherapy and claimed he had lost the will to live.

He said: "I take chemo on Tuesday and I feel sick to Saturday, and then I am right back taking it again. I don't think there is a great possibility I would do chemo in jail.

"If I have to fight the chemo and sit in a cell and be sick, I'd rather not do it. That is a choice that a person has."

The father of five, still married to his second wife, Charisse, acknowledged the effect drugs has had on his family.

"I have taken them through hell. There is no question about it, I have just run them down, completely down. Just basically destroyed them."

When, last week, Strawberry came before Judge Foster, who 12 months earlier placed him on probation for drug possession and soliciting a prostitute, a letter from his doctor was read out in court. It contained the ominous warning: "If he does not get chemotherapy, the tumour will most likely relapse and that will mean certain death to Mr Strawberry."

Passing sentence, Judge Foster laid it on the line for the gaunt, drawn figure standing in the dock, when she said: "You have got to get the chemotherapy - or you are history."

By one of those mischievous twists of fate, the man guiding the prosecution in court once pitched against Strawberry when they were both attempting to make the big time in baseball.

Robin Fusion never got out of the minor leagues and eventually left the game for law school. He is now chief of narcotics in Florida's state attorney's office.

He confessed to feeling only a modicum of sympathy for his former sparring partner.

Fusion commented: "I don't see him any different than I see anybody else that's jammed up. He could have had it all, he could have kept it all, but he chose not to. It is just as tragic that Darryl Strawberry threw it all away as it is for every one of the 17-year-old kids that I see come through here every day."

Despite his cancer, Strawberry last year won a third World Series ring with the Yankees, but he will never step up to the plate again.

With a chilling shrug he said: "I've reached a point of understanding, you know, that life is going to come to an end for me one day.

"I've battled and I've battled and kept fighting, but when a person gets tired of fighting, he can reach the end. It happens."